Goldman Sachs proved its weight in gold when its initial public offering of stock yesterday zoomed 33 percent, giving the white-shoe firm an instant valuation of $33.5 billion.

The 130-year-old investment bank is now the third-largest in terms of market capitalization, following only Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Charles Schwab.

With its fast-paced rise on the first day of trading – it closed at 703/8, up 173/8 after hitting 771/4 in midafternoon – Goldman Sachs easily vaulted over Merrill Lynch, the largest brokerage in terms of consumer accounts, whose market cap finished yesterday at $29.6 billion.

The stellar debut put Goldman shares at a premium to its Wall Street rivals, many of which saw their stocks drop yesterday. For example, Goldman has a price/earnings ratio of 20.3 as of yesterday’s close, while Merrill’s P/E is only 15.8 and Morgan Stanley’s is 16.3.

Departing co-CEO Jon Corzine got a nice going-away gift: a $76 million jump in his 4.4 million Goldman shares. Corzine is leaving the firm this month and, reportedly, is hoping to leap into a new venture with hedge-fund manager John Meriwether.

The executives are not allowed to sell their shares for three years.

But other investors who got in on the IPO were all too willing to sell their shares yesterday after the stock opened at $76, $23 more than the IPO price of $53.

An inbalance of orders delayed the opening of trading in the stock for a full hour.

More than 22 million shares traded hands, of the 69 million that had been issued to the public.

“They did a great job getting what they wanted,” said Dawson. “They didn’t price it aggressively, guaranteeing it would go up.”

Already, Wall Street is talking about what Goldman Sachs will do with the $3.6 billion it raised in the sale.

Beginning today, people are expecting the firm to make a sizeable acquisition. Many think the firm will focus on an online discount broker, specifically E*Trade Group, with which it already partners in distributing shares of IPOs to retail investors.

While Goldman Sachs’ first-day increase of 33 percent kept it well below the typical first-day gain of most Internet IPOs, the amount raised by Goldman’s huge offering was second only to Conoco Inc.’s sale of a 30 percent stake for $4.4 billion last October.